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By Tony Farkas
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I was talking to a potential candidate for a future election about their reasons for running, and the answer was one I’ve heard before.

It’s time for a change.

Anyone even remotely following politics and the direction of the country can attest that massive change is needed. Society is fast becoming something that’s largely unrecognizable, and certainly becoming more untenable, given our fractious natures and seeming inability to compromise.

However, massive change would be decidedly more disruptive than the decline we’ve experienced, since it’s taken decades to get to this. To remedy that, I propose taking smaller steps, and the way to do that is to not only exercise our rights, but to do it in an informed manner.

It starts with you, and it starts with your vote.

Granted, there is not much on the ballot this go-around, but even so, they’re just as important as a presidential election.

Most counties in Texas are just voting on 14 propositions to amend the state constitution. In those proposals are plans that include creating new agencies, adjusting retirement, setting tax caps, even abolishing the county treasurer’s office in Galveston County.

While it might seem boring, trite and not anyone’s problem, anything that’s put in a ballot measure will affect you somehow. Because of that, it’s critical that you not only show up at the ballot box, but also to educate yourself on the measures.

It should go without saying that if there is a candidate or two on the ballot, educate yourself on them as well, since we as voters are supposed to be in charge of this rodeo, not elected officials whose only reason for existing is to get re-elected.

In growing up Catholic, you learn in catechism and other areas about the myriad saints and their works, many of which you’re familiar with.

St. Nicholas, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Paul, St. Peter, etc., have been part of our collective lexicon for centuries. However, there’s quite a huge number of saints not commonly known; one I learned of years ago was Saint Thérèse, the Saint of the Little Ways.

In a nutshell, she believed that doing small things was just as important as miracles. So in her honor, and since it’s election season once again, let’s follow her example.

And to paraphrase someone else who isn’t a saint, but quite possibly could be — Arlo Guthrie — the next time an election comes around, vote so people think you’re in an organization. And if more people vote, it could become a movement.

Movements will make a difference. It starts with a vote.

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By Jim Powers
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Have you ever watched sheepdogs work? It’s amazing. A large herd of sheep in a huge pasture scattered everywhere, munching on the grass. The shepherd gives a command and the dog springs into action, running so fast at times he’s hard to follow, circling the sheep, forcing them into a tight group, then maintaining that control as he drives them back to where they are corralled.

All of this is necessary because the sheep, left to their own devices, would contently just wonder around all night, munching on tasty grass, oblivious to the threat of hungry wolves who see them only as prey. Without the shepherd and his dog to give them direction, they simply follow the rest of the herd, ultimately ending up lost and a tasty snack for predators.

The propensity of humans to, like sheep, follow the crowd often gets us labeled as sheep. And it’s an apt description in the age of the Internet and social media. Some TikTok influencer will pitch a stupid and dangerous idea, and millions of folks will run with it, sometimes dying while doing what everyone else is doing. To be part of the group. To fit in.

Politics, of course, is the ultimate herd driven enterprise. We find a politician who tells us what we want to hear, choose up sides, and fight each other sometimes to the death to support that politician, blindly following someone who is being paid by the wolves.

More disturbingly, this herd mentality has reached into Christianity. Folks calling themselves Christian have decided that they are better off unmoored from the foundation of their professed religion, Jesus, and adopt a Pan-everything-ism, believing whatever makes them fit in with their social group. This distortion of Christianity is exacerbated by social media sorting people into more and more isolated groups.

Jesus, the Jesus of the New Testament, is explicitly described as the shepherd that Christians should be following. Unfortunately, millions of people calling themselves Christian have exiled the shepherd and are following the sheep.

The herd demands absolute fealty to leaders who are clearly not Christian, ultimately resulting in cults of personality, with many self-proclaimed Christian pastors preaching from the pulpit to large congregations, that Donald Trump is the second coming of Jesus Christ.

If you are going to call yourself Christian, then read the New Testament. It is foundational and teaches clearly that Jesus is the only shepherd you should be following. And the NT teaches clearly what it means to follow Jesus and teaches explicitly that you can identify a Christian by their love and compassion for other people.

Calling yourself a Christian means something real. It’s not entertainment. It’s not a crowd of fools demanding fealty to some politician or celebrity. It’s an individual act of self-sacrifice, not a TikTok popularity contest.

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By Tony Farkas
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The current discussions regarding school vouchers make me wonder if the focus is on quality education for children.

Mostly, at least in what I’ve heard, it’s been about money, with a side trip into questioning accountability of private schools to the state godfathers.

Administrators in smaller schools rightly feel that allowing funds to be moved would affect their ability to provide education, while other education professionals point out that private schools aren’t bound by state standards.

Proponents of school choice say it will allow for greater parental involvement, as well as forcing schools in general to improve in order to maintain current enrollment.

Teachers, school administrators and board members all have the best of intentions when it comes to education. For me, that was never a concern. My interest here is about the constant interference from the powers that be.

That, and actually educating students, since any plan that is supposed to be helping students needs to actually improve education outcomes.

Many of these arguments instead focus on money, and even the loss of control by the government, especially the federal government.

So here’s how I think things will go. The State Senate has passed a measure during last week’s special session, which now is waiting on the House to convene for its deliberations. This being a pet project of Gov. Abbott, more than likely it will end up on his desk. From there, more than likely, it will end up in a series of court battles, and the issue will become stagnant and nothing will have been accomplished.

That’s just on the side of law. Funding has been deemed the biggest problem in education, but has increasing funding done anything? Is there actually an uptick in proficiency? Certainly some districts have improved greatly, but this isn’t the norm. If funding fully was the answer, then improvement would be pretty uniform.

As I’ve pointed out before, there are numerous and continuous mandates from state and local governments requiring funds to be diverted to other items, such as turning school campuses into armed encampments. (I’m not minimizing horrific school shootings, and please don’t think that. I have deep concerns because I, too, have children in school.)

Imagine if the funds required to completely surround campuses with 8-foot fencing were actually used for instruction.

I also feel there needs to be more accountability, but not on the part of the schools but on the students. A joke running around pointed out that decades ago, parents demanded of children the reason for poor grades; nowadays, parents demand answers from teachers.

That same accountability needs to be spread to parents; if one of the intentions of vouchers is to increase parental involvement, then it seems that already has been deemed a problem. Will moving money around from one school to another make a difference?

There obviously are no easy answers, but I cannot believe that adding more government oversight and meddling will solve the problems, since nothing the government does has truly been successful. Instead of vouchers, how about letting the people in the community chart their own course?

Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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By Jim Powers

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As humans, we have just a few needs. We need food to eat, we need water to drink, and we need shelter from weather. But beyond need, these are basic rights. As rights, they are not exclusive. But they are real. Without them we can’t survive.

If we are hungry, we can eat, and that food satisfies our hunger. If we are thirsty; we can drink water and that satisfies our thirst. If it is raining, we can find a structure to stand under and that satisfies our need for shelter.

In our modern society, fulfilling those basic human needs requires money. If you live on the 30^th floor of an apartment building, you can’t grow your food, provide yourself water, or keep that roof over your head without money. And for that you depend on employers, on companies.

So, money is power. But money isn’t real. Just like politics and borders, money is a figment of our imaginations. Governments create money out of thin air. And because it is fiat, they can make as much or as little as they want. And we must live with their decisions. Which gives a government unconstrained by morality or concern for people, the power of life or death over their citizens.

In our world today, 195 countries exist whose borders have been defined by force or fiat. They weren’t created by divine intervention. The world exists for all human beings. God did not create the world with permanent walls demarcating 195 countries. Those borders are political fictions and the first level of control over our lives.

Corporations, like money and borders, are also inventions of our minds. While our Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people, that is a lie. They are legal fictions. And giving them the status of people has given them almost unrestrained power.

We face in the U.S. a very dangerous future on two fronts. And while this is a warning, I think it is too late to stop the danger from either.

First, there are a significant number of politicians in our government who have openly advocated for significant reduction, or complete elimination of programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and programs that provide money so folks can buy food. These programs provide very basic support for millions of people in our country and eliminating them would cause untold suffering for the poor and elderly. The excuse they give for their total dismissal of human rights is that the country can’t afford it anymore. That’s a lie. Because money is a fiction. 

Money is worth whatever our government says it is. But that would cause inflation! Inflation only exists within the fictional economic system we have created. It is not external. It doesn’t exist because of some immutable law of nature. 

We have created an economic system out of whole cloth, defined the rules, and then insist they be followed even when the result is that all the wealth of the country has accumulated into the hands of a relatively few billionaires.

An even more daunting human rights tragedy is confronting us because of the disruption AI is producing. 

AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) will almost certainly exist within 12 months (it likely already exists, but one of corporations controlling AI just hasn’t told us yet). AGI would initially have the intelligence of the median human being and would likely eliminate 50 percent of existing jobs in this country fairly quickly. Which would result in social collapse if we don’t have in place a way to provide food and shelter for those who lose their jobs.

You will hear a lot of talk about UBI (Universal Basic Income) and UBS (Universal Basic Services) soon as ways to alleviate suffering for these people. Both are excellent ideas. But, because we live in a time of political fiction, neither have a chance of being introduced. 

It is naïve to believe that a government already talking about eliminating programs that provide food and shelter and healthcare for the poor and elderly would have any interest in providing a basic income to half the population. They will certainly talk about it, but they will never implement it. And our society will collapse. 

And, listening to a growing list of legislators, it appears collapsing our society is the goal, being orchestrated by a handful of trillion-dollar corporations through the influence of political contributions.

To them, it’s all just a money game. For us, it is life and death.

 

As always, because I’m discussing politics, I like to disclose my bias. I am politically Left Libertarian.

Jim Powers writes opinion columns. His beliefs are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.